Kind of creepy. Point taken.

“Should students still be taught cursive writing?” This is the title of a piece I came across recently in, of all places, The Costco Connection magazine. Proponents for both sides of the issue state their opinions, the yes-ers arguing that cursive helps students with hand-eye coordination, improves their ability to “chunk” letter sounds (-ing endings, for instance) which leads to better reading comprehension and spelling, and that cursive is an important part of our cultural heritage. The naysayers counter that time spent teaching cursive should be devoted to other, more important, subjects, that good handwriting is no indicator of intelligence or success (insert predictable joke about doctors’ illegible scrawls here), and that in this electronic age, the need for tidy penmanship is on its way out.

Frankly, I was surprised that anyone is even talking about this, but a quick Google search revealed that a lot of people are. I’ve never given cursive much thought, because I never learned it. I was in elementary school in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, and we learned a script-print hybrid called Duvall, which I abandoned a long time ago for a makeshift printing style that deteriorates a little more each year. Of course, this is because I seem to type exponentially more each year; when I write, unless it’s a note or a list or a birthday card, I do it at my keyboard.

But the piece made me curious about how other writers work, and if the way we write actually matters. What kind of penmanship did you learn in school? What’s your weapon of choice when you’re writing? Pen and paper? Computer? Butcher paper and crayon (as visiting writer Sallie Tisdale suggested in a workshop last year)? Does what you write with change what you write?

I meant to write my first post a long time ago. A long, long time ago. Like the first week of July. But, there were so many reasons-slash-excuses not to. At first, I’d just finished my thesis, and I was tired. Both my weary brain and my laptop’s overworked cooling system needed to take it easy. Then I went on vacation, and when I got back, I was too busy catching up on work. Then I had some freelance assignments to finish. And so on for the next two months—procrastination at its finest.

Even now, after the things on my official to-do-first list have all been checked off, I am still only writing this post because I forced myself to.

I am not one of those writers who “has” to write. I write because I make myself. Sure, I love it, kinda: writing helps me understand myself and other people, it gives me a voice and an audience, it takes me into pockets of the world I would never have explored otherwise. It makes the gears in my head start turning.

It also sucks. We all know this. As Dorothy Parker said, “I hate writing; I love having written.”

Read more »